Books about Spitball from Amazon.com

Former MLB umpire Dave Phillips was at the center of some of baseball's most unforgettable moments - Comiskey's infamous Disco Demolition Night, Gaylord Perry's spitball ejection, Albert Belle's confiscated corked bat and George Brett's pine tar bat debacle - and he shares with baseball fans the untold stories behind those incidents and many others, giving baseball fans a complete perspective on the life of an umpire..
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Beautifully produced book. Over 240 photographs and Illustrations The Spitball Knuckleball BookHere you will find:* How the spitball was discovered.* Photographs showing how it was taught by the master spitballers.* Why the spitball was outlawed in 1920 --it had little to do with safety and everything to do with attendance.* The 23 pitchers allowed to continue throwing the spitball for the 1920 season and finally allowed to throw it until they retired.* The ten best illegal spitballers.* The dry spitter--the perfectly legal pitch that breaks just like a spitball.* The ten successful Major Leaguers who threw the dry spitter.* Photographs and descriptions of how the dry spitter was gripped and thrown.* How a young spitballer not put on the exempt list for 1920 learned the fingertip knuckleball from his plumber friend and took it to the Majors, where it is still used today.* The often bumpy careers of more than two dozen knuckleballers with photographs of most of their grips..
Price: $16.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This is the first full biography of Hall of Famer Urban "Red" Faber, who won a record three World Series games in 1917--until 2005, the last time the Chicago White Sox won it all. The winningest spitball pitcher in the American League and one of the oldest players ever to wear a major league uniform, Faber regularly challenged the game’s top hitters. He experienced the heights of championship baseball until the Black Sox scandal decimated Charles Comiskey’s team and relegated Faber to stardom on second-division White Sox clubs..
Price: $29.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1911, when Bradley Hogg began his major-league pitching career for the National League's Boston Rustlers, baseball was a different game. Hogg played during a time known as the Dead Ball Era, when a pitcher could spit on, shine up, or even roughen a ball to secure an advantage over a hitter. Players used heavier bats and choked up farther on the handle, and the annual World Series was just arriving. But the names of the best and most colorful players remain familiar today: Cy Young, Casey Stengel, Honus Wagner, Rogers Hornsby, Christy Mathewson. During his nine-year professional career, Hogg played with or against twenty-seven Hall of Fame ballplayers and under the critical gaze of two Hall of Fame umpires and eleven Hall of Fame sports writers. In Spitting on Diamonds, Clyde Hogg details the life of baseball's everyman, including excerpts from newspapers throughout the country to bring to life the times in which Bradley Hogg played. The author shows how Hogg's career is representative of the thousands of men who have played major-league baseball since its inception more than 125 years ago, men who didn't make it into the Hall of Fame or win awards but made it possible for millions of fans to enjoy the game. These players were the flannelled hosts of America's favorite pastime and the ones who made the game what it was and is today. The author uses Hogg's career as a spitball pitcher in leagues from coast to coast from the majors to the minors to show the rapid change and growth of our nation between 1910 and 1920. With enough baseball statistics to satisfy even the most hard core fan, this time capsule of early twentieth-century America will appeal to sports enthusiasts and readers of general historical nonfiction alike. They will find in its pages an America now visible only in faded photographs, along with a version of the national pastime that no longer exists. Featuring multiple bunts, double steals, inside pitching, and the now outlawed "spitball," as well as the skill it took to hit such deliveries, this game was hard, fast, and nonstop. Spitting on Diamonds lets the reader understand what it was like to live and play professional sports at an important time in baseball history..
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